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With Estate Planning, Don't Forget Virtual Assets

July 28, 2012 9:42 p.m. ET

When Missouri estates and trusts lawyer Robert Kirkland was preparing a will for a client several years ago, it never occurred to him to include any provisions about electronic bank statements or e-file tax services, both of which were then relatively new.

The result of that omission became clear only last year, when the client died unexpectedly—and his wife had no way to access their joint online bank accounts and the other key financial records that were stored digitally. After weeks of trying to guess her late husband's...